Bodge du jour - past house owners I wish to shake warmly....

[Feltwell]

..by the throat.

Gypsum plastering on top of wallpaper. Actually, really bad patch plastering on top of 2 layers of wallpaper. You might think that would make it easy to get off - oh no, it's stuck like the proverbial to a blanket!

 

[Schoolmarm]

Oh! We have that here!!

 

[Nigel Watts]

really bad patch plastering on top of 2 layers of wallpaper... stuck like the proverbial to a blanket!

Tried water or steam and a thin blade such as of a filling knife to free the paper from the wall?

What really gets me down is the sheer attrition of preparing a room for decoration where everything has been done to a poor standard and has to be tidied up. I've been working on my main bathroom for weeks doing these kinds of chores.

 

[TheForge]

We have very much the same! In fact in one room we had a very wet wall with blown gypsum plaster just flaking off, only the wallpaper was holding it in place. After removing it (well taking the wallpaper off and allowing it to fall away) we found two distinct layers of cement render underneath, under which was a layer of thick corrugated, bitumastic type tanking (which we have found on almost every surface) and behind this was the original (or at least much older) haired lime plaster with a fibrous wallpaper and a flower border still in tact! Luckily the modern stuff literally pulled off in our case with minimal damage to the absolutely sodden lime plaster behind, which, 3 months later, is still gradually drying out!

 

[Feltwell]

Tried water or steam and a thin blade such as of a filling knife to free the paper from the wall?

What really gets me down is the sheer attrition of preparing a room for decoration where everything has been done to a poor standard and has to be tidied up. I've been working on my main bathroom for weeks doing these kinds of chores.

Yes - it was whilst stripping another layer of wallpaper that was on top of this, with a steamer, that I found it. The steamer doesn't seem to touch this stuff - I'm not sure exactly what it is, it looks like Gypsum but a bit more brown in colour, and it's much harder. Where I can get a blade underneath it it comes away OK, I think it's just a case of chipping away at it.

Preparing for decoration really can be a soul-destroying task - so much time & effort for what often looks to be minimal results. This room is in a bit of a state - some of the walls are brick, some are lath and plaster, some are part and part. Every time the different construction methods join there are bad cracks. I think the apprentice did the laths on the ceiling - the wall lathing has been done well, but the ceiling leaves a lot to be desired. Bad workmanship isn't exclusive to modern builders......

That example at The Forge sounds pretty extreme. Luckily no tanking here, but as the room is 3 storeys up I would hope not!

 

[MatthewC]

Whilst sanding for re-painting once, I found a couple wooden pillars with gloss paint OVER sellotape (which presumably had been used to hold up Christmas decorations or similar). At least there were only a few square inches of that, though, so it's probably not quite as annoying as gypsum over wallpaper.

The worst thing I have found in my current house was in the joists above the back bedrooms. There were about three or four different sizes of joist, the smallest being only 2" square (at about 12" spacing); They seemed to have re-used this 2x2 from somewhere else as they were all about four inches short and so only overlapped the wall plates by less than an inch at either end, and nearly all had a one inch notch cut out of them, somewhere near the middle! Whilst there was no plaster on the lath, I attached a new length of 2x2 alongside each one.

 

[Louis Henry]

A few months ago I was relating my own story of false beam-over-Artex-over-insulation -board-over-paint-over many-layers-of-wallpaper-over lovely-old beams-and-underside-of15"-old-floorboards but he capped it with wallpaper over a door including a key in the door!

 

[Moo]

We had lath&plaster over a door.

 

[JohnB]

wallpaper over a door including a key in the door!

That's very sensible and considerate. They obviously appreciated how inconvenient it would be for someone who wanted to use the door in future if the key was missing!

 

[CatherineB]

wallpaper over a door including a key in the door!

That's very sensible and considerate. They obviously appreciated how inconvenient it would be for someone who wanted to use the door in future if the key was missing!

:lol:

 

[Feltwell]

I remember as a student, a load of us rented a big old Victorian house where at some point the bottom 2 reception rooms had had an archway knocked through between them. The landlord had blocked this up, being a student house both rooms were to be used as bedrooms. We saw the outline of the arch and thought nothing of it - it was all wallpapered to match the rest of the room and looked fine.

It was only once we'd moved in that we realised he'd blocked the partition up with hardboard. It was so thin, at night you could hear the person in the next room turn over in bed. As one of the rooms was occupied by my girlfriend of the time, this meant we spent a lot more time in my room upstairs!

 

[Penners]

As one of the rooms was occupied by my girlfriend of the time, this meant we spent a lot more time in my room upstairs!

In learned discussion about your studies, I presume?

 

[Feltwell]

Of course - although we may have occasionally discussed theology instead, for a bit of light relief.

 

[Penners]

Ooh - not just AN ology... THE ology!

I am impressed.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Of course - although we may have occasionally discussed theology instead, for a bit of light relief.

Oh bad luck Feltwell. I had a girlfriend like that - she just wanted to discuss theology, when I wanted to focus on my biology practials. :wink:

 

[Merlin]

And back onto the thread...

I have the gypsum over woodchip in several rooms, as well as electric wiring that curves across walls rather than running straight up and down.

Does one class Artex as a bodge du jour, or bodge du period?

 

[Penners]

I class it as un travail du diable. :evil:

 

[LadyArowana]

I class it as un travail du diable. :evil:

To be totally fair I don't think that one can class God as a particular friend to heritage properties either. A lot of beautiful things were destroyed in both NZ and Japan. Much much worse than a few nasty goopy swirls on the ceiling. I suppose it's not that surprising though, doing the whole thing in 7 days, one of which he said was a day off anyway it was always going to be poorly constructed and prone to failures.

 

[Penners]

I quite agree.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Now I'm sorry, but that's not a full day's work in my book. I reckon He was much like our builder: "Nobody's looking so I'll slope off early. I can always pick the job up tomorrow".

 

[Feltwell]

I have the gypsum over woodchip in several rooms

Ooo - Nasty!

Does one class Artex as a bodge du jour, or bodge du period?

Well, the "bodge du jour" was a reference to the bodge that has been uncovered today, rather than when the bodge was created. But you can class Artex however you like, it is truly the work of the devil himself. At least it's out of fashion now - although it does still sell slowly I'm told - let's hope UPVC windows go the same way (don't hold your breath).

electric wiring that curves across walls rather than running straight up and down.

Curves? That's a new one on me. I've seen wiring ran diagonally quite a few times, to make a run as short as possible, but never ran in a curve..... why would anyone do that?